By Matt Collins – Fri 7th Feb 2014

Regardless, building just such a team is a crucial factor in your company’s ability to operate smoothly and navigate the changing business landscape. To increase productivity and motivation, the steps below can help you make the right difference in the way your firm approaches business.

It Starts With Recruiting the Right Talent

By recruiting the right individuals, your company can have a much easier time motivating, retaining and engaging all your employees. When hiring, look for candidates with the following traits:

Passion – Recruit employees who are genuinely excited about their work, and they’ll remain driven.

Work Ethic – Employees with a strong work ethic thrive in competitive environments and see hurdles as challenges to overcome, rather than roadblocks.

Integrity – An employee can have all the motivation in the world, but without a solid reputation, that work will go unrewarded.

Resiliency – Without the ability to recover from mistakes, motivation and engagement goes out the window.

Develop Proper Leadership Tactics

It could be said that the true measure of leadership is influence. If you displaystrong leadership skills, and employees will respond and produce in a heightened manner. Conversely, a lack of direction from senior team members can have devastating effects on employee motivation and work engagement.

There are three key effective leaders share that motivate and engage employees. Consider these elements when assessing the senior members of your firm and ask yourself how you can create alignment.

Leaders are trustworthy. Leaders are consistent in their word and go out of their way to maintain trust with subordinates.

Leaders relentlessly upgrade their team and make each and every employee see their vision for the organization.

Motivation Factors Most People Miss

When you hire and motivate the right people, the right work gets done in the right way. In other words, the machine functions smoothly. The company becomes defined by their continuous productivity improvements, widespread innovation and ability to adapt to the changing business environment.

Keep your promises. Studies have shown that for employees to be motivated, sales recruiting minimums must be upheld. These include pay, working conditions and job security. Without these, headhunting even the best employees will yield undesired performance results.

Don’t use fear as a factor. The attempt to motivate employees by making them fear that they will lose their jobs will have the opposite effect – resulting in less energy and lower morale.

Tap into their creativity. Contrary to popular belief, money is not the most motivating factor for many employees. Studies have shown that the strongest and most pervasive driver of productivity is how creative an employee feels when working on a project. If you want to motivate employees, give them projects that allow them to use their creatively.

Challenge them. The most sought-after employees have a tendency to seek out challenges, to extend and exercise their capabilities, to explore and to learn.

Relax on the rules. Imposing too many rules and formal processes can impede your ability to motivate your staff. The more set a process is, the less likely it is going to get done correctly. (That said, it is still important to set clear standards and adhere to them fairly and consistently.)